FAISALABAD: The Tandlianwala city police on Wednesday registered a case against three members of a panchayat on charges of subjecting a girl to assault.

The complainant, the victim’s father, said in the FIR that on Oct 10, his son Ghulam Farid contracted love marriage with a girl, but it was not approved by her father.

A resident of Pindi Sheikh Moosa village, the complainant said the girl’s father summoned him through the panchayat comprising two brothers and another man. The panchayat or local jury ordered that the girl be returned to her parents for the time being.

On Nov 7, he said, the girl was handed over to the ‘jury’ in the presence of two village residents.

The panchayat members, he said, pledged that the girl would be handed over to her husband in a ‘Rukhsati’ ceremony after two days.

However, he said that instead of sending the girl to her parents’ house, the brothers took her to their own place where they and the third member subjected her to repeated assaults from Nov 7 to Dec 12.

He said that later the girl managed to escape from the place and contacted her husband, narrating her ordeal.

He said the suspects warned that they would kill him if the matter was reported to the police, alleging that they also kidnapped his other son Anwar with an intention to kill him. He said that he got a kidnap case registered against them.

City Police Officer Athar Ismail said one of the suspects had been arrested, while police were looking for the others.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2017